12 Worst Performances By Pro Athletes Turned Actors

The guys in this list only wish they were cool enough to wear Raquel Welch as a cape

Like all singers want to be rappers and all rappers want to be singers…all professional athletes want to be actors. And for the most part they are all really bad at it. Miles and miles of celluloid has been wasted on the stiff, monotone performances of guys who were the top in their respective sports but were not worthy of polite applause in front of the camera. So press on and see who made my list that is in no specific order just because I found it too difficult a task to do.

Carl Lewis as Silky the Pimp in GET MY MONEY
I honestly don’t know if thus was a bit from a sketch comedy show or if some fool and his money were parted in the making of an actual film called GET MY MONEY but whatever this is, Lewis was terrible trying to convincingly play a pimp.

Michael Jordan as Michael Jordan in SPACE JAM
SPACE JAM proved that along with baseball, monogamy and facial hair, MJ was not the best at everything like he was when on a basketball court.

Shaquille O’Neal as Kazaam in KAZAAM
His first line in this movie was loud and grammatically incorrect (“Who DARE Wake Me?) and then things just continued to go downhill from there. Honestly it was a toss-up between Shaq in KAZAAM and Shaq in STEEL (where audiences were supposed to believe that Shaq was a research scientist) but the yelling and rhyming he did in KAZAAM won out.

Dennis Rodman as Yaz in DOUBLE TEAM
Y’know what Rodman’s biggest problem was an actor? He talked like he had a mouth full of marbles and then he would try and deliver his lines really fast so that everything he said just ended up sounds like “ha-duh-duh-dah-duh”.

Bruce Jenner as Ron White in CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC
Imagine how bad an acting performance you would have to give to be the worst actor in a movie that stars the Village People. Now multiply that by a million and you have Bruce Jenner’s performance in this awesomely bad movie.

Howie Long as Jesse Graves in FIRESTORM
No one asks for De Niro level acting from action stars so I can understand why a studio would throw some cash at ex-NFL star Howie Long to play a burly firefighter in the action snoozer FIRESTORM. Howie definitely looks the part but that is where the positives end. IN a genre that has dudes like Van Damme and Seagal as believable stars you would think that Howie could have had a decent career but the guy was such a stiff onscreen performer that this was his debut and swan song as a leading man in action flicks.

Brian Bosworth as John Stone in STONE COLD
His leather trench coat had more personality than The Boz did in this movie.

Roosevelt “Rosie” Greer as Jack Moss in THE THING WITH TWO HEADS
Confession time…I love this movie to death. It is so goofy that it is impossible to hate. That being said, Rosie Greer was dreadful in it.

Ray Allen as Jesus Shuttlesworth in HE GOT GAME
I understand Spike Lee’s desire to instill some authenticity into his movie by casting NBA star Ray Allen as the lead in this movie but c’mon, Spike! This is Hollywood…if movie magic can be used to make us believe a man can fly and that vampires can sparkle, I am pretty damn sure that some fancy editing and few lessons with a b-ball coach could have made it look like an actual actor was a world class basketball player. I mean it seemed to work for Denzel.

Terrell Owens as Jackson in DYSFUNCTIONAL FRIENDS
T.O. is such a bad actor that he makes Stacey Dash’s monotone delivery seem like a performance on par with Meryl Streep. The dude is not even comfortable playing himself let alone trying to embody another character altogether.

Muhammad Ali as Muhammad Ali in THE GREATEST
Watching Ali in THE GREATEST causes me such pain. To see the greatest fighter in the history of the greatest sport embarrassing himself while playing himself onscreen is just not cool, man.

Julius “Dr. J” Erving as Moses Guthrie in THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH
Aside from automatically starting off on the wrong foot by having Doc playing for a team in Pittsburgh instead of in Philly, the fact that Dr. J was a walking malpractice against the art of acting made this performance in this silly film worthy of this list.